Abstract
With the scarcity of water resources and the development of recycled water production technology, the promotion of global recycled water use is attracting more and more attention. An increasing number of publications have examined the reuse of recycled water from different perspectives to promote the sustainable use of global water resources. The purpose of this research is to systematically and comprehensively evaluate the knowledge structure, development trends, research hotspots, and frontier predictions in the global research field of recycled water use. Based on 910 screened articles from the Web of Science Core Collection from 1990 to 2020, this paper visualizes and analyzes recycled water use from the perspectives of scientific output characteristics, research collaboration networks, highly cited articles and core journals, and keywords. The results indicate that research interest in recycled water use is on the rise. Authoritative experts, high-impact institutions, and core journals are also identified. The study shows that water resources management, public health, and public acceptance are all hot topics and frontiers of research. This study provides valuable guidance for researchers to support recycled water research directions and regulatory authorities for the interest in recycled water use.
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The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments from reviewers and editors.
Funding
This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.71874135) and the MOE (Ministry of Education in China) the Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (No. 18YJA630068).
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Conceptualization: Xiaojun Liu and Li Li had the idea for the article, Li Li performed the literature search and data analysis and drafted the manuscript, and Xinyue Zhang critically revised the work.
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Li, L., Liu, X. & Zhang, X. Uncovering the research progress and hotspots on the public use of recycled water: a bibliometric perspective. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 44845–44860 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15263-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-15263-w